Early Management Startup Excellence Manager

CONAGRA • Fayetteville, AR

1d • $107,000 - $156,000 • Hybrid

About The Position

Reporting to the Senior Director of Continuous Improvement, you will lead enterprise Early Management engineering and Continuous Improvement practices across the manufacturing network. You will standardize and deploy startup and capital project methodologies that improve equipment reliability, accelerate vertical startups, and deliver measurable cost and efficiency gains. This role focuses on designing, coaching, and sustaining engineering‑led Continuous Improvement capability to ensure consistent execution and long‑term results across sites.
Location flexibility: Chicago, Illinois; Omaha, Nebraska; select field locations listed. All within reasonable proximity to a major airport.

Requirements

• Bachelor’s Degree in Engineering or a related field.
• 7+ years of experience in a combination of capital project engineering, operations leadership, and Continuous Improvement with a strong background in startups and capital installations.
• 4+ years of leadership experience successfully leading cross‑functional or multi‑site teams.
• Proven strength in coaching, teaching, and influencing leaders at multiple organizational levels.
• Strong financial acumen with experience developing business cases and presenting to senior leadership.
• Deep expertise in Early Management tools and Continuous Improvement methodologies, including Lean, Six Sigma, and Unified Problem Solving.
• Advanced proficiency with data and analytics platforms such as Power BI, SQL, SharePoint, and Microsoft Teams.
• Strong program and project leadership experience delivering scalable results across a manufacturing network.
• Willingness to travel frequently, typically up to 75 percent based on project needs.

Responsibilities

• Develop and deploy enterprise strategies for Early Management aligned with business objectives and Manufacturing Excellence goals.
• Lead cross‑site initiatives to improve startup outcomes, equipment reliability, and reduction of systemic losses across the manufacturing network.
• Build financial justifications for major projects and optimizations tied to Early Management and startup execution.
• Lead Continuous Improvement initiatives at key sites as part of the Focused Improvement journey.
• Serve as a subject matter expert, coaching plant leaders, corporate startup leaders, and engineers on Engineering Work Process, Vertical Startup, and the Method of Process and Packaging Development.
• Provide structured training, coaching, and mentorship to elevate site‑level capability and ensure long-term sustainability.
• Influence at all organizational levels, from operators to plant managers to senior leadership, to drive enterprise‑wide adoption of Early Management practices.
• Lead Early Management maturity assessments and ensure consistent application of foundational methodologies across all facilities.
• Oversee and integrate startup workflows for capital and non-capital projects, ensuring effective planning, resource alignment, and consistent results.
• Direct multi-site initiatives to ensure scalability and enterprise-level value creation.
• Leverage advanced analytics and reliability engineering tools, including Weibull analysis, statistical process control, design of experiments, overall equipment effectiveness modeling, S‑curve analysis, and intended failure testing, to drive data-based decisions.
• Develop enterprise standards, playbooks, and toolkits to improve consistency and efficiency of Early Management practices.
• Partner with other Continuous Improvement pillars, including Planned Maintenance, Autonomous Maintenance, and Focused Improvement, to deliver integrated and sustainable results.

Benefits

• Comprehensive healthcare plans, wellness incentive program, mental wellbeing support and fitness reimbursement
• Great pay, bonus incentive opportunity, matching 401(k) and stock purchase plan
• Career development opportunities, employee resource groups, on-demand learning and tuition reimbursement
• Paid-time off, parental leave, flexible work-schedules (subject to your location and role) and volunteer opportunities

What This Job Offers

• Job Type: Full-time
• Career Level: Mid Level
• Number of Employees: 5,001-10,000 employees